PaRappa The Rapper 2
PaRappa the Rapper 2 (パラッパラッパー2 Parappa Rappā Tsu) is a PlayStation 2 rhythm video game and the sequel to PaRappa the Rapper, although it is actually the third game in the series following UmJammer Lammy. Though the game boasts a number of new gameplay elements, it was not as well-received critically and failed to garner similar sales as its predecessor. Plot The story line of PaRappa The Rapper 2 centers on Parappa, who has recently won a hundred years supply of noodles and has grown tired of eating them. When Sunny Funny serves him noodles when he and PJ are at her place to eat, PaRappa throws a tantrum, prompting Sunny to call him a baby and leading him to question his maturity. As Parappa tries to find an alternative meal at Beard Burger, he learns that someone is mysteriously turning all the food in Parappa Town into noodles. After taking a brief lesson in 'Romantic Karate' from Chop Chop Master Onion, PaRappa and his friends get shrunk by his father's invention, so he helps coach them back to normal size with the help of Guru Ant. PaRappa gets drafted into the army and must complete a military boot camp training course with Instructor Moosesha. He then becomes an amateur barber after customers are being given afros by Hairdresser Octopus, who is caught under a hypnotic tune. PaRappa and his friends discover an 8-bit video game called Food Court, which was being used to control Hairdresser Octopus, and reverse engineer it to discover the noodle's weakness, sweets. PaRappa and his friends launch a sweet-based attack on the Noodle Army, and soon confront their leader, Colonel Noodle, who is actually Beard Burger Master's son who had become sick of eating burgers. PaRappa convinces him that noodles aren't the only food around. The game ends with a final party with returning hip-hop master MC King Kong Mushi, and PaRappa learns that Sunny Funny already likes him the way he is. Things go back to normal and PaRappa can eat anything...except cheese, of which he's won another 100 years supply. Promotional art shows that after the events of the game, Beard Burgers started selling noodles as well as burgers. Gameplay The game plays similar to its predecessor and features 8 stages, although (in all stages apart from stage 8) before the chosen stage starts there is a practice segment where the player has a chance to practice a small snippet of the song with PaRappa's talking stereo player; Boxy Boy. After this, the stage will start. In the stage, the teacher will give a line of rap and PaRappa will have to repeat it, or freestyle to the beat. If he messes up his line twice in a row, he drops a rank from Good, to Bad, to Awful. Performing well two times in a row will bring the player up a rank. Players lose the level if they drop below Awful, or finish the level in the Bad or Awful state. Parappa 2 handles this a little differently to its predecessors, as upon dropping a rank, the teacher will say 'Getting Worse', and the song will go back two lines, and sometimes altering the lines to make them easier to play. If the player improvises a rap successfully two times in a row, it accesses Cool mode, where the teacher leaves PaRappa to do freestyle by himself. If PaRappa can reach the end of the level in Cool mode, he'll earn a Cool ranking for that stage. This unlocks music tracks available to listen in a music player available at the end of the game. Between every two levels (except for level 8), there is a minigame in which 'Kotamanegis' (little onions) from Chop Chop Master Onion's dojo hold up plates for PaRappa to break. Hitting the plates earns PaRappa extra points to add to his previous level's score, while hitting the Tamanegis when they are not ready deducts points. When a level is completed, a versus mode is unlocked, playable with a friend or against the computer. In this mode, the two players are given a line to rap, and each player must try and improvise to get a higher score than the previous one. Beating their opponent earns a point, and three points win the game. Upon completing the game, Parappa's hat changes color to represent an increase in the stage's difficulty, going from Blue, to Pink to Yellow. When playing through the game again, the lines are remixed. Completing the game in Cool Mode unlocks a music player where you can listen to any level with a Cool Rating on, along with the full version of the Stage 8 Intro song "Come a Long Way", while completing the Vs. CPU mode on all difficulty levels unlocks the final song, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say_%22I_Gotta_Believe!%22 Say "I Gotta Believe!"] (performed by De La Soul featuring Double). The player can change his hat color on the title screen by rotating the analogue stick, but the line changes will remain, meaning the player will have to start a new game from scratch in order to play the songs in the original layout. Trivia *Parappa Town is not named so after the main character as you may think. Parappa is "paper thin" in Japanese, so Parappa Town is really "Paper-thin-town", named after the game's visual style. *One of the reasons practice segments (with Boxy Boy) were added to PaRappa 2 is because Rodney Greenblat had difficulties completing stages in UmJammer Lammy. *Boxy Boy has some unused additional practice dialoge. The VS mode tunes of stage 8 are different from what the stage provides in story mode.TCRF References Category:Video Games